When Jaws was released in 1975, it changed Hollywood and the entertainment industry for the last 50 years. Many people often point to the movie as the beginning of the end of the New Hollywood era that had been rising with the end of the Hays Code. It’s ironic because Steven Spielberg was a replacement director because the production team of Richard Zanuck and David Brown were upset that the first director, Dick Richards, couldn’t tell the difference between a shark and whale.
Sequels had been around for years, decades. Son of Kong was released less than a year from the original King Kong in 1933. And Oscar-winning movies like The French Connection and The Godfather had their sequels before the first Jaws was in theaters. However, since the movie made so much money, at $476 million worldwide, a sequel was inevitable. However, Spielberg chose not to return as he had the clout now to make his pet project Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
An idea floating around at one time at Universal Pictures was to do a prequel focusing on Quint’s time on the U.S.S. Indianapolis and what happened. Howard Sackler, who had done uncredited rewrites on the first movie submitted a treatment to Universal’s president Sidney Sheinberg, who liked the treatment but rejected the idea. John D. Hancock was hired to direct the sequel and began to work on the sequel in the summer of 1977 on Martha’s Vineyard.
But there were problems. The original concept called for Amity Island to be struggling financially from the events of the first movie. Stores and businesses are closed down. There’s less people on the island. There’s no summer jovial fun that was in the first movie. Yet, Sheinberg didn’t like Hancock’s darker approach to the movie and felt it should be more light-hearted and action-oriented. The production had run into many shop owners flat out refusing to allow their storefronts to be boarded up. Despite the money being pumped into the local economy, the people of Martha’s Vineyard were less hospitable with shirts made up reading, “Universal, Go Home.”
Also, Hancock didn’t care for Sheinberg’s insistance that his wife, Lorraine Gary (who played Ellen Brody), go with Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) on the boat to hunt down the shark. Needless to say, this along with a criticism of an actress who was dating another Universal executive was what caused Hancock to get the axe. Production shut down as the studio scrambled to find a replacement director. Spielberg was still finishing up post-production on Close Encounters but he reconsider returning.
But Universal wasn’t wanting to wait any longer. They wanted a movie in the theaters for the summer of 1978. Joe Alves, production designer, and Verna Fields, who had won an Oscar for as editor for the first movie, approached Universal was a proposal to co-direct the movie. But the problems on the set of The Outlaw Josey Whales prevented this from happening. Since Clint Eastwood had infamously worked to get Phillip Kaufman fired from that movie because they were both pining for actress Sondra Locke, the Directors Guild of America changed the rules thus preventing any cast or crew member from stepping into the director’s chair on any movie from here on out. In the event that a director is fired, quits or God forbid dies, a third party director has to be hired. (This is why Dexter Fletcher was hired to finish Bohemian Rhapsody and Paul Thomas Anderson was tapped to step in the event Robert Altman died while filming A Prairie Home Companion. That movie would prove to be his last as Altman passed away at 81 less than five months after the movie was released.)
There was also another problem hurting the production – Scheider didn’t want to return. The former amateur boxer turned character actor was finally getting a lot of meaty leading roles following The French Connection and especially a blockbuster like the first Jaws. And production on the first movie (nicknamed Flaws because of all the problems) had him turning down every offer. (Scheider half-jokingly recalled he came close to drowning during filming the first movie.) But Scheider had also signed a three-picture deal with Universal with the first movie being 1977’s Sorcerer. The next role was to be a role in The Deer Hunter. Earlier reports indicate Scheider was supposed to play the Steven Pushkov role that John Savage played. Yet, Scheider didn’t feel he should play second-fiddle to Robert DeNiro.
However, now, it was Scheider himself who was supposed to play the role of ironworker and Staff Sgt. Michael Vronsky in the movie. Yet, Scheider left production two weeks before shooting was to begin over creative differences. (The production of The Deer Hunter is one of huge problems itself. DeNiro had to pay the insurance of John Cazale who was dying from lung cancer and all scenes of Cazale were filmed first. He died after production ended. DeNiro nearly walked off set when Christopher Walken unexpectedly spit in his face during a scene. Both DeNiro and Walken were slapped very hard during the Russian Roulette sequence by an Vietnamese person who really hated Americans. Director Michael Cimino wanted it to look as authentic as possible.) But with Scheider leaving, Universal had a bargaining chip. They offered Scheider the chance to do Jaws 2 and forget about the third movie.
Even though he wasn’t wanting to return, Scheider went head-first into the production determined to do the best he could. Since Robert Shaw’s Quint was killed off and Richard Dreyfus was working on Close Encounters and The Goodbye Girl, he didn’t want to return. This meant Martin Brody would be the main character. Jeannot Szwarc was hired to replace Hancock and Carl Gottlieb, who had co-wrote the script for the first movie as well as appearing as the sleazy newspaper publisher, was hired to rewrite the script. He reportedly made more money.
Production moved from New England to the Florida Gulf Coast as production commenced in August all the way up to late December. Reportedly, prinicpal photography ended days before Christmas. It got so cold at times actors had to suck on ice cubes to keep their breath from being seen on camera. The same production problems of filming on the seas occured that happened in the first movie. Except this time, Scheider and Szwarc didn’t get along. Scheider criticized him for focusing too much on technical shots as well as filming extras rather than the principal cast. A meeting was called where crew members mediated and it ended with Scheider and Szwarc getting into a physical fight they had to be pulled apart.
Scheider would later refuse to be in any of the sequels even appearing in the 1983 movie Blue Thunder just to make himself unavailable when production started on Jaws 3-D. He later said, “Mephistopheles couldn’t talk me into doing it. They knew better than to even ask.” (But Jaws 3-D is the subject for another post.) Despite the problems behind the scenes, the movie is the best sequel of the franchise and one that still manages to evoke the fun of the high seas with also the terrors lurking underneath.
Even though the movie was released three years after the first movie, it appears to be that five or even six years have passed. Martin and Ellen’s sons Michael and Sean, who were very young in the first movie, are much older. Michael (Mark Gruner) is now 17 and Sean (Marc Gilpin) is around 10-12, but his age is never told. Amity has more or less returned to the tranquil lesiure island it was prior to the shark attacks in the first movie.
The movie begins with some wealthy scuba divers being attacked by a great white shark while they find the wreckage of The Orca, which was Quint’s boat. Mayor Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) and local businessman/Town Council member Len Peterson (Joseph Mascolo) are hoping to attract more investors to the island after the opening of a new hotel. Ellen works for Peterson who seems to harbor some sexual feelings toward her. This is remanant of Peter Benchley’s source novel where Vaughn has arranged some shady dealings as well as Ellen having an affair with Matt Hooper. Naturally, Martin doesn’t think too highly of Peterson and Peterson doesn’t care for Martin.
But after Martin’s deputy Jeff Hendricks (Jeffrey Kramer) can’t find much after responding to the abanondoned boat the scuba divers were using, there is another incident in which a water skier and boat driver are both attacked by the great white. The driver inadvertently causes the boat to explode when she fires a flare at the shark not realizing she had poured gasoline every where when she tried to use a gas container to hit the shark but it was too heavy. Martin begins to suspect something is wrong but naturally Vaughn and the others don’t want to believe that it’s another dangerous shark on the coast.
An dead orca washes up on a shore near the lighthouse but Martin’s concerns it was killed by a great white aren’t concurred by an oceanographer Dr. Elkins (Collin Wilcox) who says it could’ve died from anything and had scavengers ripping it apart for days. (The use of a dead orca was a dig at Dino De Laurentiis’ 1977 movie Orca which opened with a killer whale killing a great white shark.) And when Martin discharges his service revolver on the beach when he thinks he sees a shark close to shore from a shark tower, he is fired presumably at the behest of Peterson. Martin had mistaken a school of bluefish for a shark.
At the same time, Michael and his friends are spending their days sailing around the island. Yet, Martin has prevented Michael from going sailing and arranged for him to work a summer job. This angers Michael because he’s interested in Jackie Peters (Donna Wilkes) a cousin of one of his friends who’s visiting. Vaughn’s son, Larry (David Elliott), is also interested in Jackie. This subplot focusing on the teenagers has been criticized over the years as a precursor to the Slasher craze. Halloween wasn’t even released when Jaws 2 opened in theaters.
Granted, it is a valid argument. Most of the teenagers seem to be indistinquishable. I know it was the late 1970s but all the guys have either longer hair or perms so it’s hard to tell them apart. Larry comes off as an alpha male bully which is the only way to tell him apart. And Andy Nicholas (Gary Springer) is more heavyset so that’s how he’s able to stand out. (Incidentally, Springer would appear alongside Cazale and Al Pacino in the opening of Dog Day Afternoon). Of the women, only Tina Wilcox (Ann Dusenberry) and Jackie seem to stand out. The rest maybe have a handful of lines but spend the most time screaming.
Speaking of screaming, Jackie comes off as possibly the most annoying character in the movie. Even though her behavior is common with people suffering a huge trauma like being attacked by a freaking shark, Jackie and especially Wilkes’ performance makes us wonder if she had a different fate in the movie that was changed in the last minute. Everything about her leading up to the final half hour suggests she’s going to be shark chow. She’s very annoying and follows a certain pattern that would become quite common in other Dead Teenager Slasher/Horror movies. Wilkes would go on to appear alongside MacLean Stevenson and Kim Richards in the horrendously bad show Hello, Larry which they tried to shamelessly crossover with Diff’rent Strokes to improve ratings.
Aside from the teenagers and a plot that seems more like a retread of the first one, there are some thrills as Martin wonders if he’s becoming paranoid, especially since no one believes him about another shark being off the coast. Also, anyone who’s ever grown up in a small tight-knit community knows how the powers that be can overlook the obvious. A popular meme has arisen in the last few years urging people on the importance of voting since Vaughn is the same mayor still after the event of the first movie. Comparison were made between Vaughn and the Trump Administration during the summer of Covid-19 in 2000. The late Hamilton still brought a sensibility to the role that Mayor Vaughn felt through thick and thin he was acting in the town’s best interest. There’s also hints that Vaughn may be sympathetic toward Martin’s trauma. When Martin presents the council with footage taken by the divers, they can’t see a shark but Vaughn may be telling himself there isn’t a shark, even though he knows it is.
A scene in which Martin wades through the tides and surf when he spots something floating has some nice tension with a jumpscare that works and is earned. But it mostly lacks the tension that Spielberg brought. This is mostly because the mystery of the shark is gone. People going in to the movie have seen the shark. That’s what they’re there to see. You can’t hide the shark from them a second time. And while there is some good action scenes such as the water skier part, there’s still some questions on just how aggressive a shark can be.
Can a great white shark really pull an amphibious helicopter underwater? Would a shark survive having half its face burned? Would a shark burst into flames by biting down on an underwater electrical cable? Most great whites hate human flesh and deaths are attributed to them biting off limbs when they’ve mistaken humans for seals.
Regardless, you have to have some suspension of disbelief. What makes the movie work is that despite it faults, it’s still good entertainment for a couple of hours. And the tagline “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water” has become one of the best ever created and used over the years in other variations. Reportedly the late Benchley came up with that, even though he spent his later years fighting for sharks after they became endangered in the 1990s.
The final production cost of the movie was $30 million which adjusted for inflation is $140 million in 2023 dollars. The producers said they never approached Universal executives with a propsed budget out of fear it’d never be approved. Regardless, the movie was a tremendous success grossing $208 million worldwide. But Universal didn’t quit when they were ahead. They continued to produce two more sequels both of which are notorious for how bad they’re made even though the third one was still a success at the box office. But there are countless killer shark movies now.
Scheider continued to act in movies and on TV for the next 30 years before his death in 2008. Gary acted for another year but took some time off to go back to being a book editor. She returned to the role in the fourth movie and retired from acting. Hamilton died in 1986. Many of the other actors who played the teeagers retired from acting. Even though he had been a child actor going back to The Brady Bunch in 1970, this was Gruner’s last role. Gilpin continued to act during the 1980s but has also retired.
Dusenberry had a memorable role alongside John Heard and Jeff Bridges in Cutter’s Way but has since become mostly a character actress in movies and on TV. Keith Gordon, who was only 16 while filming his role as Doug Fetterman, would go on to play the younger version of Scheider’s character in the Oscar-winning All That Jazz. He appeared in Dressed to Kill and Back to School before focusing on directing movies such as The Chocolate War and A Midnight Clear. And Springer has since worked behind the scenes as a publicist in the enterainment industry.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 